Advertisement
Published: April 15th 2010
Edit Blog Post
Early Sunday morning start - jump on a train from Bangkok Noi station and head north west. Another cheap-as-chips 3rd class ticket. Clatter through the countryside for 4 hours. Paula catches forty winks. We arrive in Kanchanaburi at about 1pm. It's as hot as an oven. Find a place with a pool and air con, then head out to explore...
Kanchanaburi is the site of the infamous Bridge on the River Kwai, built as part of the death railway by allied PoWs and forced labour during WWII. We hire scooters and have a look around a museum, then buzz up the road to the bridge itself. It was bombed by the allies in 1945 but was rebuilt after. We walk across to the other side, just as a train comes rattling around the corner and creaks slowly across the bridge, kids waving from the windows.
Keep the scooters the next day and wobble off to some waterfalls in Erawan National Park, Paula using her new motorbiking skills like a demon. Its one straight hot road for about 20km, with speeding pick-ups and lorries overtaking us, then it gets a bit quieter as the road weaves up through the hills
for another 50k. We both find out that when a butterfly hits your face at 50 mph it is a good idea to pull over and clean your glasses.
The waterfalls are great - popular with picnicking Thai families, out for the day with cool boxes and umbrellas. Park rules prohibit any glass containers inside, and we pass queues of Thai tourists at the entrance, waiting to decant their whisky into plastic water bottles.
Park up the scoots in the shade and 'trek' the 2km to the top, passing 6 sets of falls on the way. Arrive at the top, hot and sweaty, wait for a coach party (who look like the cast of Hollyoaks) to leave, then jump into the ice cold water for about 20 minutes. Little fish nip at our legs - we can't see them in the cloudy water so convince ourselves they are piranhas and decide to get out again, tripping over boulders as we go.
We walk back down and jump in again at pool number 5. Bigger fish cruise about - the water is a lot clearer here and we can see they are only trout, but a lot bigger.
They still come and have a go if you keep still for more than a couple of seconds, which keeps a lot of people out of the water. We brave it and slide down a some rocks and into the pool, and muck about for about an hour.
Then back down again to the bottom, just as thunder starts to rumble in the distance and big splats of rain begin to fall. We catch the edge of a storm so hang around for a bit and grab some food. The rain hammers away on the tin roof as we tuck into a huge bowl of pad thai and noodle soup. Wait til it clears, jump back on the scoots and wind our way back home, the roads dry again after about 5 minutes.
I Skype my family that night, who are all together for the bank holiday. Evie and Bella both giggling and shy to talk, fascinated by looking at themselves on the screen. Bish picks his nose in the background. Even the dogs get held up and thrust into the camera lens, not quite sure what is going on. Great to see everyone.
Massages are good
value here, so we both get one. Paula on one side of the curtain getting an oil massage, me on the other getting a 'normal' one from a mid-50s thai woman. Mine turns out to be quite brutal, and roughly 90% pain to 10% pleasure. What calm there is is interrupted by the cockerel ringtone from her mobile phone about halfway through. She then chats to her mate with one hand whilst squeezing my leg like she's stemming blood from a gunshot wound with the other. The session ends on a few brutal moves. I never thought there could be an element of combat to a massage. Anyone coming into the room would think they'd caught me wrestling with an old woman. Anyway, feel better for it.
Leaving P by the pool, next day I visit another museum, an allied war cemetery on the edge of town, and some caves. On the way back I have some lunch with the locals in a roadside canteen - strips of roasted pork and bean sprouts floating in a dark brown soup. Spicy as heck.
P has tummy troubles for the next couple of days so keeps close to the room,
watching back-to-back Law & Order and other US cop dramas (turns out we're not able to get The Bill in Thailand). I'm dropped 15km upstream and left with a canoe, paddle and life jacket. I wind my way back down the river. Not much wildlife - few kingfishers and a herd of cows having a dip, their snouts blowing as their heads bob above the surface. I pass under the famous bridge just as a train goes across.
There's no word on P's new passport by the end of the week so we decide to head further north west...
Advertisement
Tot: 0.1s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 17; qc: 73; dbt: 0.0534s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb